“What don’t you believe?”
“Not Hortense! All my life I’ve wondered if a woman named Hortense actually existed. And now you come along…”
The telephone buzzed on her desk. She dimpled at him and lifted the receiver to answer it. He shrugged and went over to push the elevator button and she continued talking into the mouthpiece without glancing in his direction again until an elevator stopped and he got in.
In the lobby, he stopped at the desk and found the clerk on duty was a moon-faced man, who brightened alertly when Shayne stopped in front of him and lit a cigarette. He said, “You’re a detective, aren’t you? Isn’t it terrible about Mr. Wallace? The Chief of Police just went up to Four, you know. Are you working on the case, Mr. Shayne?”
Shayne nodded. “I suppose you know all three partners?”
“Oh, yes. Very well indeed. Mr. Tompkins stays here, you know, when he’s in the city.”
Shayne said, “I know.” He expelled a stream of thin blue smoke. “What kind of guy is he?”
“Mr. Tompkins? A gentleman.”
Shayne said, “That means he tips generously. Quite a ladies’ man?”
The clerk lifted his shoulders slightly. “We try not to pry into the private affairs of our guests.”
Shayne said, “Nuts. No hotel guests have any private affairs. Not if they stay more than a few days. Is he out a lot at night?”
“I do believe Mr. Tompkins has a tendency to keep rather late hours. He is a wealthy bachelor, you know.”
Shayne said, “I know. They occupy the entire floor, don’t they?”
The clerk nodded. “On a yearly lease.”
“Much overtime work in the office?”
“Very seldom.” The moon-faced man pursed thick lips.
“Suppose one of the partners did come back at night,” Shayne pursued. “Would the elevator stop and let them off at Four?”
“Certainly, but they would be required to sign in and out just as in any office building.”
“Is there an entrance from the stairway?”
“A fire exit is required by law, but theirs is kept locked, I believe.” The clerk lowered his voice, “Do you suspect anyone in the office, Mr. Shayne?”
Shayne said, “Not particularly.” He tugged his hat down over his wiry hair and went out into the bright sunlight to his car with a slight frown on his gaunt face. Any one of the partners, and possibly some of the employees of the brokerage firm, could easily have a key to the door from the stairs and wouldn’t have to check in or out with the elevator operator if he wanted to get into the office after hours. Taking an elevator up to the fifth floor in the evening would be quite easy to manage without being noticed in a busy hotel. And then he could walk down to the fourth floor…
Shayne turned down to First Street and drove west to the railroad tracks, then got on Flagler and proceeded west to Thirtieth Avenue.
The only apartment building on the north side of the Thirty-Hundred block was a small, four-story stucco structure built close to the sidewalk.
Shayne parked in a hole just beyond it and walked back, went up the short walk to a small entryway with worn linoleum on the floor and a row of mailboxes on each side. Some of the mailboxes had names beneath them, but there was no name on 3-A.
The doorway stood invitingly open beyond the mailboxes, and Shayne followed the strip of worn linoleum to a self-service elevator at the rear.
The car was waiting and he got in and pressed the button for 3 and it clanked up and shuddered to a stop.
There was a curiously dank and shuttered smell in the hallway when he stepped out. There were two doors at his right, marked 3-A and 3-B, and there was dead silence on the third floor when the elevator door closed automatically behind him.
Shayne pressed the button of 3-A and waited. He waited a long time, alternately pressing the button and waiting twenty seconds. During that period he heard no sound whatever to indicate there was another living creature inside the building and the heavy walls cut out any sound of traffic from the busy street outside.
After pushing the button an even dozen times, Shayne fumbled in his pocket for a well-filled key-ring and stooped to look at the lock on the door. He was caught in that undignified posture when the door opened inward without the slightest warning and he saw a hand at the level of his eyes holding together the edges of a red quilted robe that ended just below the girl’s knees with a foot of lacy blue nightgown showing above bare feet with violet-tinted toenails.
He straightened slowly, his gaze moving up past full breasts that made the robe bulge and parted it, to the face of the girl whom Bob Pearce had shamefacedly described as beautiful and completely sexy but not a whore.
She was not exactly beautiful this morning. The long black hair, that Bob had described so alluringly, fell in dank strands on either side of her face, framing a sallow complexion and bloodshot eyes that shrieked aloud the fact that she was suffering with a royal hangover. Without lipstick, her mouth was slack with a full underlip that pouted into a sort of sneer as she leaned negligently against the door-jamb and lifted her gaze to study Shayne’s face with a passive lack of interest. Yet the distinct aura of sex was still there. It was almost a physical emanation over which she had no control.
She said, “You don’t look like a Peeping Tom, so what the hell are you doing at my keyhole?” Her voice was husky and deep-throated, holding a note of casual curiosity.
Shayne grinned widely and jingled the keys in his pocket. “I was checking to see if I had a key that would fit.”
She said, “Come on if you want in that badly. I don’t know you, do I?”
Shayne said, “No,” and followed her into a sunny square sitting-room with windows open on two sides to provide a pleasant atmospheric contrast to the dank staleness of the hallway.
It was a shabby, unpretentious room that invited a man to relax and drop cigarette ashes on the floor to join those that had overflowed from full ashtrays. A square gin bottle lay on its side under a chair and there were two sticky glasses on a tray at the end of the sofa. One high-heeled black pump lay in the center of the floor, and another was just outside an open door through which Shayne could see a disordered double bed. There was a crumpled white silk blouse draped over the arm of a chair and a brassiere on the seat beside it.
His hostess stopped in the center of the room and turned to look searchingly at the redhead. She said, “I don’t know about you, Buster, but mama needs a drink.” She had let go the edges of the robe and they were parted widely in front to show a deep vee between heavy breasts behind the thin blue of her nylon gown.
She blinked her eyes and grimaced unhappily. “It was quite a ball last night, but there was still a fifth of gin in the kitchen when I passed out. You interested?”
No question about who he was or what he wanted at this hour of the morning. No trace of worry or embarrassment at letting a strange man walk in unannounced. Just a straightforward acceptance of the fact that he was a male and she was a female and they were alone together and she wanted a drink before the discussion went any further.
Yet Shayne knew instinctively that Bob Pearce had been right. She wasn’t a whore. She was a woman who took her sex where she found it, thankfully and without question.
He said, “Sure, I’m interested,” and she waved one hand negligently and said, “Park the frame while I shake something up.”
She went through a door into a small kitchenette and Shayne heard a refrigerator door open and the water tap turned on. He picked up the tray with the two glasses on it and carried it to the kitchen door. She was standing at the sink trying to worry the foil off the top of a full bottle of gin with her fingernails. She handed it to him and took the tray and asked him, “On the rocks or shall we bleed a couple of Marys?”